


at the end of the night.

by lannisnow



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canonical Underage Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 10:53:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1263628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannisnow/pseuds/lannisnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a character study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the end of the night.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saltwife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwife/gifts).



> DUDE DID YOU GUYS KNOW ANNE BONNY IS THE COOLEST SHIT IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE I JUST READ ABOUT HER LIFE AND LET ME TELL YOU A THING. [This is the coolest wikipedia you will ever read.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bonny)
> 
> Underage refers to the fact that canonically Anne married James at ~13 years old and met Jack when she was ~16. So. Alludes to underage in that regards. Nothing too graphic, though.
> 
> I wanted to write applejack so I did. Saltwife prompted me with: "Anne wears makeup." Excuse my horrible inaccuracies regarding makeup in the 18th century I know nothing about it so I just bull-shitted it.

The first time Anne wears makeup, she's thirteen and wearing a dress her father ordered for her. She's being tied into a corset that makes it difficult to breathe, but when she looks in a mirror it takes her breath away anyway.

That night Anne catches a young servant girl flirting with James Bonny. After dinner she slips a table knife under her skirts and stabs the servant, watches her bleed on the carpet with sick fascination. Her eyeliner smears with blood when she wipes the back of her hand across her face.

\--

She is thirteen, has red hair, and has many gentleman callers. "Your hair," she's told as her father drags a dark red lock behind her ear and looks at her as though she's his moon and stars, "is probably your only redeeming feature." He laughs and she tilts her head, wonders why he says these things to her when he claims he loves her so much.

\--

James Bonny comes to dinner and her father doesn't agree with her choice. Anne knew he wouldn't when she met James. A poor, dirty old sailor who dabbles in being a pirate. Clumsy and foolish and oh so in love with Anne.

She burns down her father's house when he disowns her. She kisses the white-washed wall and smiles at the red-lip stain it leaves behind before she drops the flame. James runs his arm around the back of her shoulders and Anne Cormac, the hot-headed daughter of the respectable merchant becomes Anne Bonny, the pirate.

\--

Dresses were all that Anne grew up in, but are beyond impractical on the sea. She grows to love the feel of fabric between her legs almost as much as she does James. The sea under her feet is as much a woman as she is, and she shares her secrets with the waves.

Sometimes, she thinks, they share secrets with her, too.

\--

Anne stops decorating herself. She finds a hat with a curl on the side and pushes her hair back, braids it between her fingers when the sea bores her.

The waves beat against the deck when she leaves the ship. James is God knows where, doing God knows what, probably in Nassau twiddling his thumbs as he waits for information to bring him a step closer to power. Anne is less enthralled with power than she is with adventure, and finds herself in the Bahamas with barely any money on her person.

She sets up a tent on the beach and takes off her hat, pulls her hair over one shoulder and strips down to her lightest undershirt and a pair of pants. She catches a whore on the beach, meandering around looking for a lay and an eight piece and asks for a stick of coal and lines her eyes. When she's done she asks if she looks decent, gets a nod from the drunk whore, and follows a poor, dirty old sailor to the taverns.

Men buy her drinks and she watches a burly man shake a bottle threateningly at a smooth-talking young pirate. They scrap at each other for what seems like ages and Anne finds herself ignoring the attentions of a proper gentleman to watch.

Eventually the tavern comes to a roar and a fight starts. It takes only a matter of seconds. The intimidating bottle becomes a weapon that slams across the skull of the smooth-talker. He falls to the floor and jolts back to his feet, twirling as though his world is spinning and he can't find which way is up. A punch is thrown and another bottle smashes, but the pirate stumbles and twists his way around the aggressive crowd of muscled men and bosom-bearing whores.

Anne stands up away from the gentleman at her side, excuses herself with nothing but a wave of her hand and slips out.

He leaves a trail and she follows it like a good hound, seeing the bewildered faces of the townspeople and weaving her way through the thinly populated streets. She avoids a young woman with a necklace in her hand, gesturing and speaking a language Anne is sure she could learn if she paid close enough attention.

She finds him bent over himself and muttering a strain of vulgar curses she's not sure she's heard before. Her sleeves are long and the night is hot so she tears the left one down the seam on her shoulder and stalks up to him like he's a prize.

"I'm sure we can come to some sort of agreement-" he stops mid-sentence, the hard line of his shoulders softening. His face is drawn together and Anne wants to trace them with her fingertips, wants to smooth out his brow and smooth out his shoulders and edge her way deep into his mind.

Instead, she stalks up to him like prey and folds herself onto the ground in front of him, presses the balled-up wad of her torn sleeve onto the open wound on his temple and tilts her head.

"You are... Not who I was expecting," he says. Anne presses the cloth against his wound a little harder. He doesn't flinch. "Who might you be?"

She pulls the cloth away and folds it in her hands, blood barely making a mark as she makes a tight square and lifts it up again. "Bonny," she answers, because it's so much easier. Her husband's name, not hers.

"Bonny what, might I ask?" he asks, eyeing the ripped cloth at her shoulder, his eyes respectfully avoiding anything below her neck.

"Anne Bonny," she responds, reluctant. "An' you're a right cunt."

He pulls his head back and his mouth twists in a smile. "Is that so, Miss Bonny?"

"He wanted you to leave an' you kept pesterin' him. Why?" She feels daring, drops her arms to her side but still crouches in front of this man she followed out from a bar. She's always been too adventurous, too anxious to throw caution to the wind and watch it fill up the sails. It cost her an inheritance before, and it could cost her her life now, she thinks. For a moment she wonders if she can get to the knife she stuffed in her boot before this man starts for her, wonders if her aim is good enough to cut off his cock and shove it down his throat.

But he smiles and looks towards the entry of the alley, turns back to her and leans close, whispers, "Because he owes me a great sum of money," and pulls back.

He grins like he has a million secrets to share and she wishes she knew them all.

His hand raises and Anne feels herself itching to grab her knife again. His thumb rests gently against the underside of her eye and swipes up. "Your makeup is smeared," he says, his smile softening.

Anne tries to ignore the way her blood runs hot in her veins.

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Bonny," he says after a second. His hand covers hers and he slips the rag of her sleeve from her fingers, lays it on his temple and winks through a wicked grin. "I'm afraid I have to disappear for a few days while that captain's men hunt me down."

He stands and starts to leave. Anne watches him go before she's overcome with the urge to stop him.

"Mrs. Bonny," she corrects just as he turns to leave. He turns his head and squints at her, asking her silently to repeat herself. "Mrs. Bonny. Not Miss."

His eyes blow wide. Anne is enamored, she realizes. Enamored with his expressions. Enamored with his respect. Enamored with everything about a proper pirate.

"Calico Jack," he responds, dipping his head and waving out an arm.

\--

She wonders if he tried to escape her, Calico Jack. She pulls her hair up to the top of her head and wipes the coal off of her eyes. She dresses in loose coats and heavy pants and makes her strides wider and longer, her shoulders hunched over in quiet aggression.

Anne finds him leaning over a large sheet of paper spread over the top of a barrel, gesturing wildly towards a taller, darker man with even darker hair and a stern expression. She hears Calico Jack call him Charles, his voice twisted so angrily she wonders if even his name leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

She follows him to another tavern and stays a hundred paces behind him when he walks the street afterwards.

He turns a corner and she loses him. He's disappeared into thin air in front of her eyes.

That is, until she is slammed to the wall with a hand around her throat. Her hat falls to the ground and she snarls, bucks against the body pressed against hers, hands reaching out to retaliate and fingernails digging deep into the shoulder of the man holding her.

"Well, well. Mrs. Bonny. A pleasure." The hand around her throat relaxes and Anne can see again, her vision clouded before in adrenaline. "I thought that you must have left."

Anne jerks a knee and claws deeper into Calico Jack's arm. He winces and pulls back, his hand protectively covering himself from her leg.

They glare at each other for what feels like a minute, before Calico Jack jerks his head to look back at the docks.

"I have to ask, Mrs. Bonny, you wouldn't want to join a new ship, would you?"

\--

Anne rediscovers herself on these decks.

Her old ship had been disgusting. Full of men who didn't know how to raid or fight, too drunk or too old to do much else than throw a punch at each other in the light of day.

The men of this ship are animals. They rip at their enemies with ferocity and take everything they can. They bend the rules so far Anne wants to see them break. She watches as Nassau opens its arms to the crew with each haul. As the Captain embraces Miss Guthrie and she feels Jack sneer at her side.

She often wonders about James. The first time Jack had pushed her against what became their cot, bit at her neck and his hand drifting between her legs, Anne had thought of James. About how clumsy he'd been, how young she was. They fumbled together and Anne had been sure of herself back then as she was now, but inexperience had made it uncomfortable and strange.

Jack has a way of making her forget about him when they're together, though. His mouth as talented and clever on her body as it is when he speaks.

She thinks, maybe Jack is the one who will bring us to success.

He sits on the edge of their cot and smiles as he draws coal outlines around her eyes and she thinks, maybe I will find adventure with him.


End file.
